WRC 2 Review
Developer Milestone
Publisher Black Bean/ Ubisoft
Platform Ps3, Xbox360
Release Date Out Now
Rally fans had there pick of titles 5 years ago but have been left crying out for a good outing on this current generation of consoles. With the Dirt series taking a very different route these days rally enthusiasts are hungry for a return to the good old days of a simple game that handles correctly and has a proper WRC mode and has no annoying menu music and thankfully no annoying American announcer shouting at you.
Italian studio Milestone, who have some excellent pedigree when it comes to motorsport, developing the wonderful SBK12 and of course last year’s WRC title set about filing that void.
The first two things you will notice is that.
1. It doesn’t look great.
but
2. It really does drive great.
It has been a long time since a rally game just felt right and struck that perfect balance between power and control on the road. It’s a hard thing to get right especially for rally games that take place on dirt tracks. Dirt 2 infamously got it wrong with their shopping trolley on ice approach, GT5 didn’t quite grasp the fun aspect of rally either.
WRC is pretty spot on though and before you have reached the end of the first section marker you will have that car going sideways like a pro. The smaller cars especially can be thrown into corners with great gusto and still manage to hold the road. Listening to you co-driver is essential, as long as you follow his instructions to the letter you can’t go wrong and it is hilarious when you crash and he screams!
High speed crashes are almost inevitable though with all the tight corners and trees planted in the most unfortunate of positions and large chunks of time in between sections will be spent repairing. Repairs can only do so much so it is important to take care of the car to the best of your ability.
As mentioned this game won’t win any beauty pageants but sometimes that’s ok. Not every game is blessed with a big enough budgets that will allow those extra months polishing trees. The most important thing is that the cars look good (which they do) and the tracks looks some way plausible (which they also more than do). When you are whipping up the hand brake to go around a 180 degree hairpin turn you shouldn’t be looking at the scenery anyway.
WRC is a stripped down to the basics rally game and while very enjoyable to the purist it does have some draw backs. Mainly it’s pretty much the same as last year’s outing. Some very small tweaks have been made, I’m sure the developers have done much more under the hood but from the players point of view not a whole lot has changed.
Fans of Rally that have been somewhat lost in recent years will get a lot out of this game, it’s accessible enough for the beginner and for the guys who just want to grab a quick game for ten mins. The cars handle like you expect the real things to handle like not like what gamers have become accustomed to so while it might not feel the same it should feel right.
IF you are looking for a bare bones WRC outing then pick this up, if you have last year’s version then you probably know just what it’s like unfortunately.
Score 7/10
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